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A Selective Timeline of Censorship in the U.S.A.
1997
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The
U.S. Supreme Court declares CDA unconstitutional.
The Court rules that attempting to regulate the
Internet to prevent children?s access to ?indecent?
or ?patently offensive? materials ?places an unacceptably
heavy burden on protected speech?. The court states
that the Internet is to be judged by the most
stringent First Amendment standards and rules.
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| Andy
Cox, Citybank posters |
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Worried
about trademark infringement, San Francisco State University
president Robert Corrigan orders the removal of a series
of posters by SFSU student Andy Cox lampooning
Citibank?s ?In Your Dreams? billboard
campaign.
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| Kara
Walker, Cut paper and adhesive on wall. |
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Kara
Walker, Camptown Ladies, detail, 1998.
Cutpaper and adhesive on wall. Overall size 9
x 67 feet.
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Africancan-American
artist, Betye Saar, initiates a letter-writing
campaign protesting Kara Walker?s paper cutouts,
Presenting Negro Scenes Drawn Upon My Passage
through the South and Reconfigured for the Benefit of
Enlightened Audiences Wherever Such May be Found, by
Myself, Missus K.E.B. Walker, Colored, 1997.
Tensions are finally aired at a symposium at Harvard
addressing the sensitive issue of the recycling and
reframing of racially stereotypical images in contemporary
culture.
Four
nude sculptures by Auguste Rodin, including The
Kiss, are pulled from a traveling exhibit shown
at Brigham Young University in Utah.
The
San Antonio City Council eliminates all city funding
to the Esperanza center, a community arts organization,
following a campaign that characterized Esperanza as
?pro-homosexual,? ?pro-abortion? and anti-?family values.?
In May 2001, Judge Orlando Garcia rules that the City
of San Antonio had violated the First Amendment rights
of the Esperanza Center. He finds that Esperanza was
penalized for expressing its viewpoint, namely the promotion
of social and economic justice-through its arts program.
The
Anchorage, AL Assembly strips the Out North Contemporary
Art House of municipal funds for failing to produce
only art that is ?strictly mainstream...that you would
take your whole family to.?
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| Jock
Sturges, C.,Paris |
Bookstores,
particularly Barnes & Noble and Borders, receive protests
against Jock Sturges? books with photos of nude
minors. In at least 20 locations protestors enter the
stores and vandalize copies of the books. Barnes & Noble
is indicted in Alabama and Tennessee on ?harmful to
minors? charges for selling books by Sturges and photographer
David Hamilton.
Videos
of the Academy Award-winning film, The Tin Drum,
are seized by Oklahoma City police under pressure from
Oklahomans for Children and Families (OCAF). Police
claim the film violates the state?s child pornography
law.
Planet
Comics and Science Fiction Store in Oklahoma City closes
after two years of harassment resulting from charges
against the owners for trafficking, selling and displaying
?obscene? comic books. The police raid on the store
and subsequent eviction by the landlord, on the complaint
of a member of the Christian Coalition in conjunction
with OCAF, result in plummeting sales when customers
could not find its new location.
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